Actor Anne Heche Dead At 53 [UPDATED]
Actor Anne Heche was taken off life support on Sunday following injuries from a car crash days earlier, according to a family spokesperson. She was 53 years old.
“Anne Heche has been peacefully taken off life support,” said family spokesperson Holly Baird.
On Friday, Heche was pronounced “brain dead” and put on life support while her family sought a match for organ donation.
Heche was severely burned when she crashed into a Los Angeles home in the Mar Vista neighborhood on Aug. 5. Shortly after the crash, her car burst into flames, which took firefighters nearly an hour to extinguish, according to NBC News.
She was taken to a hospital and initially listed in critical condition, then she fell into a coma Aug. 8.
After Heche’s accident, the Los Angeles Police Department launched an investigation into the actor for allegedly driving under the influence and fleeing from an earlier hit-and-run, the Los Angeles Times reported. Police confirmed to the Times that they obtained a search warrant to test the actor’s blood alcohol level.
LAPD confirmed to TMZ on Aug. 11 that Heche had cocaine in her system during the accident.
“In preliminary testing, the blood draw revealed the presence of drugs,” the LAPD statement said. “The case is being investigated as felony DUI traffic collision.”
In her 2001 memoir, “Call Me Crazy,” Heche discussed her traumatic upbringing and the mental health issues that arose in her adult years.
“I’m not crazy,” she told Barbara Walters during an interview with ABC News. “But it’s a crazy life. I was raised in a crazy family, and it took 31 years to get the crazy out of me.”
Heche’s acting career began in 1987 when she starred in the long-running soap opera “Another World.” In 1991, she won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama series for the show. She has appeared in numerous movies, including the 1996 film “The Juror,” the 1997 horror film “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” 1998′s “Six Days Seven Nights,” 1997′s Donnie Brasco” and the 2002 thriller “John Q.”
The actor dated comedian and television host Ellen DeGeneres from 1997 to 2000. She was married to cameraman Coleman Laffoon from 2001 to 2007. Heche was also in a relationship with actor James Tupper from 2008 to 2018. She is survived by her two sons: 20-year-old Homer Laffoon, whose father is Coleman Laffoon, and 13-year-old Atlas, whose father is James Tupper.
This article has been updated to reflect that Heche was taken off life support Sunday, after she was declared “brain dead” on Friday.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
